iSean

i wrote about coComment when it first came out more than a year ago here. i tried it and ended up not using it because of some technical difficulties (see this post), but i haven’t forgotten about it. well, i just learned that coComment has version 2.0 being released on Monday. oh, what is it you ask . . . well, from their website:

coComment helps you

• track all comments you make on blogs and other comment enabled platforms
• track the comment based conversations you are involved in, as well as those you want to follow as an observer

Keep track of your web based comments and conversations. You don’t need a blog to find this service useful! As a registered user, whenever you leave a comment on a compatible platform (see here for the ever growing list of platforms we support) coComment will automatically begin tracking the resulting conversation stream - updating you whenever someone adds a follow up comment. If you don’t make a comment, you can still have coComment track a comment stream if you are interested in following the discussion as a reader.

it’s just a great way to keep track of all of the various comments you make, wherever you make them (e.g., blogs, youtube, etc.) or even comments on blogs that you don’t participate in, but just prefer to follow. it’s a great concept. perhaps it’s time to give it another try?

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, coComment

i am one of the select few individuals working this summer to revamp and update our teacher education program. i get to help figure out how to best provide our future teachers with the strategies, skills, and know-how to use technology in their future classrooms. wow. currently, we have a single technology course for preservice educators that is required. it is a prerequisite for getting into the College of Education and is taken before any students can apply to the COE. i hate this model. getting a college sophomore in ED 205 who doesn’t have experience with lesson plans and who doesn’t have teaching experiences to draw makes much that is taught in ED 205 seem like an abstract concept. so, i have much higher expectations for the new model we create.

in the best case scenario, the various classes and professors in the COE would work together to teach all of the ISTE NETS-T (that’s the standards for teachers with regard to technology in education) and a technology course wouldn’t be necessary. i spent much time reading up on things in the Journal of Computing in Teacher Education. the bottom line is what i already knew . . . that most college of education faculty are not prepared to teach their students the various technology standards or even a decent sized nugget of the standards. thus, an educational technology course is still fairly necessary. but, i am going to push for some of the easier standards to be transferred to other courses. i am going to make a case that other professors should be modeling the use of technology in their teaching and some standards rely on access to classrooms, so they are more ideal for student teaching.

we had our initial committee meeting and i think (still early) that our technology course is going to be moved away from being a prerequisite. in fact, the course might now be moved to occur in the semester before student teaching. this is also the semester that will occur after a semester where students go into the classroom for a field experience called student assisting (not as interactive as student teaching, but not a passive experience either). i am quite pleased with the potential of this model. our students will have actual classroom experiences to draw on when doing the ED 205 requirements. i am keeping my fingers crossed the end model turns out this well. but, our whole College of Education is just now being emailed the minutes and results from our initial meeting. hmmm.

Technorati Tags: ed tech, undergraduate, teacher, preservice, technology in education

i am back on my blog after a few weeks of intensive teaching. the next 2 months are devoted to writing materials for use in an undergraduate educational technology course for education majors. i have dibbled and dabbled with various iterations of this “textbook” in the past. i am currently an author for the textbook that been used previously in this course. i get 50 cents a copy when the textbook is bought new. we have between 400 - 500 students take this course per semester, but most buy the book used as my royalty check is typically just over $100/year. given the time i put into writing the textbook, i think that works out to about 2 cents an hour (kidding). seriously though, the profit i make is meaningless. i see no reason to help a publisher and a college book store rake in well over $20 off of my students so that i can get enough money to buy my students pizza once per semester. this is the thrust of why i want to bypass the publisher and the bookstore. my contract with the publisher will not allow me to write another textbook for profit to compete with the current textbook so i have no intention of doing so. i do have the intent to have a new product for our students this fall. moreover, i have no intent of claiming authorship, so i think it would be hard for McGraw-Hill to come after me.

i wrote an article last year called, “wiki . . . wiki . . . wiki textbook?” i argued that wiki-based textbook should be replacing the paper textbooks most educational institutions are using. i really liked the open source nature of the wiki engines. well, after time to reflect and test things out and hold many conversations (including a conference presentation in March of 2007) i have come to a new conclusion — i am abandoning my wiki-based textbook ideas. instead, i am going with the open source CMS tool called Drupal. Drupal has a module I’ve installed called, “Books.” my experience is that the Drupal book module will help to produce a much better product for learning. Much like a wiki engine, Drupal can allow for anyone to edit and contribute content. however, i have no intention of being that open with my textbook. for one, i had a wiki-based textbook started and after more than a year, i am dealing with spammers signing up and adding spam far too often. i’ve forced users to register to make changes and they even jump through this hoop. i am going to be trying some strategies with the Drupal book tool, but I still am planning on allowing anyone to potentially contribute material and everyone will encouraged to add comments to various material pages. but a textbook cannot be edited during a school semester, so taking advantage of the technology is somewhat limited. i do plan to have a mechanism in place to allow for content to be added and edited but it will be in a queue waiting for the appropriate time. while in queue, folks who are interested can view this text/edit/revisions, etc. and discuss, etc.

i will spend more time on this new textbook over the next month, but this is where i am right now. i am not ready to give the web address to the new book yet, but i will post it soon enough with another link to the older wiki-based version so that folks can see the differences back to back. stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: drupal, ed tech, technology, wikis, wikitext